Keeping centred, keeping grounded
poetry
Super Sad Black Girl
by diamond sharp
A plot upon a plot
After my day retreat with WOC Azadi I came home with a date in the diary to play.
I’d set it up with Theresa Easton to go play with her letterpress printing gear again. I didn’t have so much as a plan as I did have a word: PLOT.
I rocked up with a number of different subtracts to play with and just wanted to explore what I mean when I use the word, PLOT.
We set up the printing plate with the word PLOT repeated in different type fonts. We arranged them into a neat A5 sized piece and then let the inking commence.
I played with different coloured inks, directions of papers, different papers and got myself into a meditative rhythm.
It was so much fun and I’m so grateful to Theresa to allowing me to play in her studio for free.
It was good to catch up too and chew the fat.
More. I want more play like this.
The Plot of Our Repair
I had the pleasure of gathering with the WOC Azadi again in Sheffield today.
We gathered to share ideas around how to plot/plotting our healings, our liberation together.
Visual journaling was on hand to capture our thoughts, feelings, plans and plots.
It was such a nurturing and nourishing space in nature. It was a gathering of hope and aspirations.
It was an honour to be part of the day retreat. Ideas for The Plot of Our Repair came about from a reading is Saidiya Hartman’s essay , The Plot of her Undoing (2020).
The plot of her undoing begins with his dominion. It begins in the fifteenth century with a papal bull, with a philosopher at his desk, pen in hand, as he sorts the world into categories of genus and species. It begins with a bill of sale, with a story in the newspaper that enumerates her crimes, with a note appended to the file: she answers questions easily, but appears stupid; it begins with a wanted poster that reduces the history of her life to a single word-condemned.
And then towards the end of this essay there is a switch. A turn to explore how we can undoing the plot of her undoing. How we can move against the forces aiming to ruin/ control/ oppress the black/brown woman.
The undoing of the plot proceeds by stealth. It is almost never recognized as anything at all and certainly never as significant.
…
It begins with the earth under her feet. It begins with all of them gathered at the river and ready to strike, with all of them assembled in the squatter city, with all of them getting ready to be free in the clearing.
The undoing of the plot begins with her runaway tongue, with her outstretched hands, with songs shared across the unfree territory and the occupied lands, with the pledges of love that propel struggle, with the vision that this bitter earth may not be what it seems.
The undoing of the plot, the plot developing towards our repair was started before us. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We continue this journey, this plotting together. Today makes me feel that we have already won.
On the pulse of change
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of Morning: The Inaugural Poem (New York: Random House, 1993)
To start living how I want the world to be
What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
I’ve been noticing how my work/ being has been reactive. There’s been a sense of scarcity and time urgency that’s been guiding my thoughts and actions. There’s been a hopelessness. Because some incidents are out of my control but which have impacted me. There’s been feelings of not being appreciated, feeling a lack of trust and working without purpose, moving away from my core values and moral compass.
I might have been using food or drink to numb my way through the shit. Through the ‘work’, not allowing myself to feel and be present. Really present to all the feels.
Do you feel me?
I know I need to take a step back and really look at the life I’ve been living. This is the only life I have and cannot be relived. I have a deep desire to change the system. To abolish the system and live otherwise.
And yet in order to change the system, I have to change my life, how I live my life. The way / how I live has to reflect the way/ how I want the world to be.
What does this mean in reality?
How I am just as much as what I do within the system will have an effect on system change. I have to be living my life with intention and purpose. Making sure I’m living my values, that I’m not compromising my integrity. That each decision I make is coming from that place of love and trust and hope.
That I’m not shutting down but open to togetherness but also trusting my gut that when I say ‘no’ it’s not from a place of malice but from a place of capacity and boundaries.
I’m learning, I’m sharing and I’m growing. Alone and in collaboration.
And I’m feeling and shifting into the practice and recognition that this is coming from a place of love and care rather than exhaustion and pain.
Small steps. Small acts. Small makes up the large. Small scales up to large.
I’ve got to be practicing the world I want to see now in my own life. Daily. Practice.
Love not hate.
Cooperation not competition.
Conversation rather than condemnation.
More care less harm.
More listening less violence.
The turn towards Mother Nature rather than against her.
A recognition in the value and worth of every human being regardless of race, class, gender, religion, ethnicity, age, sexuality, body type and body and mind abilities.
Revolutions of our times: A Manifesto
From The Peoples Wants come a book that I invite you all to read. Alone and in group, reading and discussing together as we learn about revolutionary strategies for doing the work now to bring about structural change. How we can work together to make this happen.
You can obtain free copies of this book here and in different languages.
I’m reading it now if anyone wants to join me in discussions about it, just get in touch.
Every vision is also a map. As freedom fighter Kwame Ture taught us, “When you see people call themselves revolutionary always talking about destroying, destroying, destroying but never talking about building or creating, they’re not revolutionary. They do not understand the first thing about revolution. It’s creating.”
Quoted in ‘So you’re thinking of becoming an abolitionist?’ By Mariame Kaba
walking and talking with June, shares the load and eases the pain
Is it only Wednesday? What a week already and it’s only Wednesday.
Walking down the street, shooting the breeze and sun with June . I ask her, how come her words are so profound?
She nods and smiles.
It’s the living who keep the dead alive. It’s the living who keep the dead alive. They come alive when their words come through our mouths.
And on the other side Black girls are free – wherever/whatever that may be.
I wish I was on that Other side as this side sure is a lot to carry. A lot for one to carry. I moan. I whinge okay, girl’s got to let it out somehow.
Burdens, trauma, mournings and death are not supposed to be carried alone.
Sharing the pain, easing the pain. In community. I want me some of that.
Is it only Wednesday? My life, this week has been hard already and too much to bear alone.
a sea of skulls each one different from the next
after Ron Mueck
“Mass” by Ron Mueck at NGV Triennial
Here is a mass
of white upon white
skulls, tumbling
everywhere upon the galleries’ floor
a turning sea, resting
biting into another
black holes
shadowed sockets
promising questions without answers
a warning? a threat?
what remains long after our bodies have decayed
an impressive 100 skulls,
dwarfing visitors as they loom
here and here, cool, corridors
as catacombs above ground
forcing us to face our mortality, yes,
but also a certain care is needed in life for each other. Yes?
Living Wild Studios 